John Wilson

I worked in audio for ten years. Audio is signal flow: what goes where, in what order, and what happens when a stage fails. So is software, and so is getting models to build it.

I've led development at Sessionwire since 2017 and run index9, a small Mac software studio. Kelowna, BC.

sessionwire, 2017 to now

An online studio for recording and mixing with people who aren't in the room. I've led development through three versions of it.

36,000+
accounts
100,000+
calls since 2023
200+
releases
1,300+
code changes merged
190,000+
lines of code
1,957
automated tests
  1. 2017: 1,011 commits
  2. 2018: 1,120 commits
  3. 2019: 160 commits
  4. 2020: 140 commits
  5. 2021: 1,278 commits
  6. 2022: 1,127 commits
  7. 2023: 1,268 commits
  8. 2024: 789 commits
  9. 2025: 899 commits
  10. 2026: 1,649 commits
My changes to the code by year, about 9,400 commits. Development paused in 2019 and 2020.

The Sessionwire page has the history and three pieces of work in detail.

with models

In 2026 I rebuilt Sessionwire's call system. If your connection drops, you're put back in the call, and nobody gets left waiting alone. It went out as seven releases, and each one took this path.

  1. plan34 docs, rewritten three times
  2. buildClaude, in small changes
  3. reviewCodex and Grok, two other models
  4. readme, line by line where it matters
  5. test1,957 tests, over 300 in a browser
  6. releasewith a switch to turn it off
Debugging
A model checks an open issue against our call records, session data, logs and errors. It can read them but not change them. Open issues went from 28 to 16 in three months.
Sound search
Search inside Sessionwire that finds audio by how it sounds. Describe a sound, or drop in a track.

Firelight is a YouTube channel of sleep stories. I built the software that makes them, and every episode takes this path.

  1. researchClaude Opus
  2. writeClaude Opus
  3. gateI edit chapter one before any money is spent
  4. narratethe Kokoro voice, on Modal GPUs
  5. render10-bit HEVC video on Apple Silicon
  6. reviewsound and picture checks, then me

also

The Tascam Portastudio 488 rebuilt in the browser: eight channel strips, a cassette deck, level meters and transport keys.
A Tascam Portastudio 488 that runs in the browser. Open the studio and press play, or read how 8track was built.
Whetstone
A Mac app from index9 that rewrites your rough prompt for the model you picked.
Windrose
A Mac app from index9 that controls the fans on Apple Silicon Macs.

before

Ten years in audio: live sound in Canada and the UK, music for film and TV, and leading the audio engineering program at a Kelowna college. I left in 2015 to write software.

BA in Sound Technology from LIPA. MA from Middlesex, on remote multimedia collaboration.